Carmel Belo, left, and Patricia Barker made up a bipartisan ballot-preparation team Tuesday at the Denver Elections Division. The pair removedcompleted ballots from the envelopes and secrecy sleeves and flattened them for counting.

Unofficial turnout for Denver’s 2011 municipal election reveals strikingly low voter participation, a trend that has continued since 2003.

Tallies from Tuesday’s mail-only election show that 112,914 voters cast ballots, accounting for a 38 percent turnout of the 298,205 ballots the Denver Clerk and Recorder’s Office mailed to voters.

Unofficial totals that break down votes by precinct will be released Friday.

The turnout percentage this year is down roughly 4 percentage points from the 2007 municipal election, where 42 percent of voters cast ballots.

However, in the 2007 election — which was also all mail-in — ballots were sent only to active voters.

But this year, because of a change in the state mail-ballot statute, ballots were sent to active and inactive (failed to vote in the last election) voters. There are 224,924 active voters in the city.

“There was no overarching issue or cause that engaged the electorate,” said Floyd Ciruli , a local political analyst. “You saw three competitive individuals (in the mayoral race), and without great controversy it was difficult to see the difference between them, so people just didn’t care to vote.”

The 2003 election featured a combination of in-person polling stations and mail-in ballots.

Roughly 244,000 people were pegged as active voters in 2003. Of those, 114,492 turned out to vote — making for a 47 percent turnout, far exceeding the 24 percent turnout in 1999.

“In 1999 it was (Mayor Wellington) Webb’s third term and he wasn’t being challenged. Plus, Columbine had happened just days prior,” Ciruli said.

So will more voters come out five weeks from now for the June 7 runoff?

Only if there’s controversy, Ciruli said.

“People will really need to be convinced there’s something at stake,” he added.

A native of Colorado, Kurtis Lee was a politics reporter for The Denver Post from February 2011 until July 2014. He graduated cum laude from Temple University in 2009 with a degree in journalism and political science. He previously worked as an online writer in Washington, D.C., for the PBS NewsHour.

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